More clowning from Saletan, as Slate adds a 1988 article to the sidebar of his earlier article sliming the caucuses as undemocratic. The crux of his complaint is this:
The network brass who deal with this process point out that it's incomprehensible, slow and seriously impure as an exercise in democracy. They spawned the N.E.S. in 1983 to eliminate these problems and to tell them who "really" won the caucuses. The N.E.S. was supposed to count how many Democrats went to the caucuses to pick each candidate as their first choice for the nomination—a simple straw vote. Above all, the N.E.S. was supposed to report those results quickly, so the networks could announce the winners during prime time on caucus night.
But, as any Iowan can tell you, the who-voted-for-whom vote count is a red herring. That's not the result of the caucus. The result is the count of delegates assigned to the viable candidates. Every caucus participant can check the party's math and make sure there's no skulduggery or manipulated counting.
Mickey Kaus approvingly quotes the 1988 Saletan piece, and correctly observes that there are 4 counts of the caucus results:
1) The entrance poll2) The "pre-viability" count
3) The "realigned" or post-viability count
4) The delegate count
But then Kaus goes on to say that "we have to take the press' word that Count #1 is accurate--there are no actual ballots to count to see if the entrance poll is right". But Count #1 doesn't mean a thing! Nor does count #2, or 3. Only Count #4 -- the delegate count -- is what matters. It's a collective result, and it's as democratic as can be, where anyone who's registered to vote is eligible to participate.
The scribes fret and worry that the different counts may result in a tie, or an indeterminate outcome with no clear winner. You might as well bray that the first quarter of a football game doesn't determine a clear winner, and is thus contrary to the spirit of football.
Posted by Chris at January 19, 2004 01:13 PM